It's better than nothing but it's still far behind uBlock Origin or even the Brave's built-in ad blocker. Their decision to stop supporting uBlock Origin made me drop it as my alternative browser.
This reminds me I have to see what's up with my install. Tried running earlier and got a message that it's secure store is busted, and have options to switch profile or continue and lose data, and all profiles are similarly broken. Luckily I don't keep much in it beyond sites like GMail and anything else not very Firefox friendly. Hoping this doesn't mean I lose access to my Google account as it's only logged in there.
I have a question. My ISP, allegedly, knows what websites I go to. So why can't I pay my ISP an optional $20 a month that gets evenly distributed directly to those websites, in exchange for an ad-free web experience?
Surely I'm not creating much more than $20 in ad revenue in total per month, right? Can't we just cut out the middleman and all walk away happy?
People have been trying stuff like this for almost 20 years now.
The core problem is that while people hold up that ads are the problem, the actual problem is that people like free stuff with no strings attached, i.e. have your cake (the content) and eat it too (nothing traded for it).
So when you present people an alternate way to compensate creators directly, they overwhelmingly just stick with ad blocking. There is a long case file of fools taking the internet at their word that "I want to give but the ads are so bad I can't!". They don't want to give lol
I don't think that's the case. I think the problem is that the sort of market behavior that would drive a company to run invasive ads in the first place betrays its fundamental lack of respect for its users. I want to pay for stuff. And I have tried. Even in doing so, I've found piracy is still often the superior service to using what I'm actually paying for.
Exactly. I'm not opposed to paying a few bucks a month to a website I visit a lot, but that adds up. At some point a "Netflix for Adblocking" starts to make sense.
I'm not sure why your ISP should be involved. Ideally they don't know what sites you're visiting. Your browser knows, though. And what you're describing is kind of what Brave tried to do with BAT (and kind of failed at).
Speaking as someone who managed to get uncle Murdoch to sponsor writing an adblocker/payment tool similar to yours (while I was working at an adtech business), but then got stalled by the publishers (who on avg. hated ads), specifically the direct supply sales people (who tend to have louder voices in those companies, have mortgages to pay) -- the issue is systemic.
ISPs are already selling your data to a bunch of data brokers, I don't think ad spend is the only goal there.
How many websites do you go to a month? Hundreds? Thousands? And you want the ISP to handle the payment processing out to them? Many probably international? And each ISP doing this on their own?
Sure, why not? They're billion dollar corporations, they can handle some basic payment processing. If it creates a genuinely better user experience, it will increase customer loyalty and make them money in the long run.
Well, your ISP likely _doesn't_ know which sites you are going to.
In the old days, they'd run proxies, but with SSL, they no longer know where they are going, only that they are, for example, going to an AWS or GCP site.
To anyone that doesn't know: Vivaldi's code is partially closed source [0]. It's not much better than Google Chrome on that regard.
[0]: https://vivaldi.com/blog/technology/why-isnt-vivaldi-browser...
For those interested in a GPL-licensed browser from Norway:
https://nordstjernen.org/index.html
I’ve had a really good experience with Vivaldi as a replacement for the Arc browser.
It really is nice to have a browser from a company whose incentives seem to be for the actual users.
It's better than nothing but it's still far behind uBlock Origin or even the Brave's built-in ad blocker. Their decision to stop supporting uBlock Origin made me drop it as my alternative browser.
This reminds me I have to see what's up with my install. Tried running earlier and got a message that it's secure store is busted, and have options to switch profile or continue and lose data, and all profiles are similarly broken. Luckily I don't keep much in it beyond sites like GMail and anything else not very Firefox friendly. Hoping this doesn't mean I lose access to my Google account as it's only logged in there.
I had the same thing when I switched from Gnome to Niri. In the end I got it fixed somehow, but I don't remember the exact details.
It was about how the default keyring was called, and that the name of the keyring ia actually case sensitive.
I have a question. My ISP, allegedly, knows what websites I go to. So why can't I pay my ISP an optional $20 a month that gets evenly distributed directly to those websites, in exchange for an ad-free web experience?
Surely I'm not creating much more than $20 in ad revenue in total per month, right? Can't we just cut out the middleman and all walk away happy?
People have been trying stuff like this for almost 20 years now.
The core problem is that while people hold up that ads are the problem, the actual problem is that people like free stuff with no strings attached, i.e. have your cake (the content) and eat it too (nothing traded for it).
So when you present people an alternate way to compensate creators directly, they overwhelmingly just stick with ad blocking. There is a long case file of fools taking the internet at their word that "I want to give but the ads are so bad I can't!". They don't want to give lol
I don't think that's the case. I think the problem is that the sort of market behavior that would drive a company to run invasive ads in the first place betrays its fundamental lack of respect for its users. I want to pay for stuff. And I have tried. Even in doing so, I've found piracy is still often the superior service to using what I'm actually paying for.
Exactly. I'm not opposed to paying a few bucks a month to a website I visit a lot, but that adds up. At some point a "Netflix for Adblocking" starts to make sense.
I'm not sure why your ISP should be involved. Ideally they don't know what sites you're visiting. Your browser knows, though. And what you're describing is kind of what Brave tried to do with BAT (and kind of failed at).
Speaking as someone who managed to get uncle Murdoch to sponsor writing an adblocker/payment tool similar to yours (while I was working at an adtech business), but then got stalled by the publishers (who on avg. hated ads), specifically the direct supply sales people (who tend to have louder voices in those companies, have mortgages to pay) -- the issue is systemic.
ISPs are already selling your data to a bunch of data brokers, I don't think ad spend is the only goal there.
How many websites do you go to a month? Hundreds? Thousands? And you want the ISP to handle the payment processing out to them? Many probably international? And each ISP doing this on their own?
Sure, why not? They're billion dollar corporations, they can handle some basic payment processing. If it creates a genuinely better user experience, it will increase customer loyalty and make them money in the long run.
Well, your ISP likely _doesn't_ know which sites you are going to.
In the old days, they'd run proxies, but with SSL, they no longer know where they are going, only that they are, for example, going to an AWS or GCP site.
SSL (and most DNS queries) expose the hostname
Unless ECH and DoH are enabled, which I believe has been the default on Chrome and Firefox for a few years now.
Calculating shares is basically impossible from DNS records and easily abusable.
That is basically the whole premise of the Brave browser though.